A Thousand Splendid Suns Theme

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss (...) These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen” (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross). Compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern make mankind beautiful, but it also makes it defenseless . When one has concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, he takes sacrifices, risks, and lives with uncertainty. When man is compassionate, he lives a vulnerable life. Love and compassion bring out the beauty in mankind, but they can also bring out its weaknesses. Because of man’s compassion, he

The five aspects of quest, which apply to every literary work, are the quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges along the way, and the real reason to go there. The quester of A Thousand Splendid Suns was Laila. The place she was going was Pakistan and her reason was to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan. Along the way she faced many challenges including the death of her parents, being separated from Tariq, and being married to her abusive husband Rasheed. Her real reason to go to Pakistan was so she could be with Tariq once again and save the lives of her children.

“An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4), sets the tone for the beginning of Mariam’s life throughout the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Many women are mistreated throughout the novel, but Mariam’s childhood is much tougher because she is a harami, or “bastard child”. Mariam tries to find emotional and physical shelter in her lifetime, but struggles to find it. In the beginning of her life she can’t find emotional shelter from her mother, Nana, so she tries to find shelter from her father, Jalil, but can’t find a connection. She then was forced to marry Rasheed, but can only find physical shelter in him. Later in the novel, she becomes friends with Laila,

Mariam’s alienation prompted by her mother, father, and husband, in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, reveals the oppression and shame around being a woman in the society of her native Afghanistan. Mariam’s countless, inescapable struggles throughout her life were all regulated by the systematic dehumanization of women in a patriarchal society, which resulted in her living in constant shame and fear. Starting from her birth, she was seen as a bastard because she was conceived out of wedlock, from both her parents, Jalil and Nana, and her society. In her childhood, Mariam is marginalized, by living in a cottage far off from the public eye, because of her father’s fear of humiliation and her mother’s fear of Mariam experiencing the

Equality and fairness is something that people have always been striving for and hoping to receive. The novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by author Khaled Hosseini displays the journey of two Afghan women during rough times due to the religious extremists known as the Taliban. These two women, Mariam and Laila, faced cruelty throughout their lives even at the hands of relatives and their so called loved ones.

Martin Luther King Junior once stated, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals”, in agreeance that justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle, Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns writes about the struggle to achieve justice amongst to characters. Mariam and Laila had very different upbringings, yet they where destined to meet one another through a man, Rasheed, who disrespected women thus advocating injustice.

If someone said the word vampires, what immediately comes to mind is the “classic “ image of one with fangs and a cape that feed on innocent lives. Although you can have your classic vampires in books and movies, not all are portrayed like that. As Foster explains in How To Read Literature Like A Professor, usually in literature, the portrayal of a vampire is used to signify the evil and pure, and when the sinister succeeds he takes that purity and vitality away from the victim. A Thousand Splendid Suns, a novel by Khaled Hosseini, follows the journey of two women who are married to the same man, and how he exhibits those traits of a vampire and attempts to take that vivacity away from them.

Friedrich Nietzsche once stated, “The world is beautiful but has a disease called man”. It can be inferred that “man” is a cliché that defines humans in general; therefore, the quote can be interpreted as, the world is pure, but humans are otherwise. I agree with Nietzsche, and I believe that his quote can be reinforced by the morals of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and the various stories found in Greek myths. A Thousand Splendid Suns makes common usage of the theme of struggling and enduring to demonstrate immoral decisions that people have used to hurt others. Greek myths, however, use metaphors that range from characters and what they embody to gods who represent different parts of human life.

Several themes present in A Thousand Splendid Suns such as poverty, war, abuse of women, and love exemplify the impacts that one’s circumstances can psychologically have on the individual. When Mariam, and later on Laila, were stuck living with Rasheed, they became emotionally scarred and lived in a constant state of anxiety. When Mariam first moved in, she lived in perpetual fear of “...the time Rasheed might at last decide to do to her what husbands did to their wives. She lay in bed, wracked with nerves, as he ate alone downstairs.” Before marrying Rasheed, Laila embraced women’s rights and believed that women could be successful in society, due to Babi’s (her father) positive influence on her. After marrying Rasheed, all hopes of a successful life were destroyed. Her plight was exacerbated when the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan with their strict, misogynistic rules. Afghanistan's near constant state of war had negative implications on the two women, especially Laila. Laila lived in constant fear of bombings and shootings killing loved ones or innocent civilians. Because of this, “...sleep never

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a deep delve into the culture of Kabul and its neighboring cities and countries. Throughout the entire book the two main characters, Mariam and Laila stand by and watch hardship in their own vicinity, and far away things that eventually come directly to them. In this distribution of malice our two main characters gain a lot of experience in surviving whatever the ever changing environment throws at them, and this specific set of experience sets a lot into Power of education. Power of education is essential to make change in the world around guided by desire, experience. and determination.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini is a story about a fifteen year old named Mariam. Throughout the book, she has to learn how to navigate the trials and tribulations of being a female in a third world country with limited women’s rights and ancient customs, along with dealing with the anger and frustration of coming from a broken and tumultuous household. This book strikes an emotional chord with me, and there are several reasons why. The main things that give me an emotional reaction are: Mariam’s sense of hurt and confusion towards Nana, the questionable sexual contact that she is forced to engage in with Rasheed, and her complex love-hate relationship with her father, Jalil.

Growing up in Afghanistan, Khaled Hosseini had a firsthand experience of the difficulties and hardships of life (Achievement 1). He was born in 1965 to his father, a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry, and his mother, a Farsi and history teacher at a high school in Kabul. He enjoyed flying kites when he was younger, describing them very vividly in The Kite Runner, and was inspired by films from India and the United States, which he discusses in A Thousand Splendid Suns (1). In the 70’s, Hosseini’s father was posted to Afghanistan’s embassy in Tehran, Iran. There, Hosseini gained his knowledge on classical Persian literary traditions that both countries share (1). It was here

The summer reading assignment book that was titled, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the same man who wrote The Kite Runner. That story was a about the relationship between a father and a son. Although the author is the same, the main theme changes. It takes place throughout an extended time period of about 40 years and it centers on the relationship between two women from Afghanistan. The story involves numerous characters and the use of these characters allow the novel to take on a life of its own.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a somber story full of tragedies that the war caused, and generous crimes against humanity, it displays almost every mood you can experience. There is anticipation and happiness that Mariam feels as she waits for her father in the beginning of the story; and then there is disappointment that consumes her when she is told that Jalil, her dad, doesn’t want to see her when she waits outside his doorstep. Mariam and Laila experience love through friendship whenever Rasheed is not near, but often they endure the anxiety of his temper and his hatred and beatings towards them. They both savor moments of excitement when they seem to be so close to escaping their brutal husband, but it is soon followed by their close to

A Thousand Splendid Suns is such a beautiful book because of the copious ways a reader can intrepid the novels meaning. There are three that stand out above the others. That is to say, the connection with theses perspectives occurred without the need to intensely analyze the text. Historical, Marxist and feminist lenses did just that. From a historical perspective, the text is a factual telling of Afghanistan from the nineteen sixty’s to the early two thousands. Specifically, the reader quickly understands the social, political, economic, cultural and intellectual turmoil of the time. On the other hand, if viewed from a Marxist lens, the text becomes a reflection on class struggle and materialism. Why else would Hosseini choose to imply, even straight up tell which class each of the character belonged to? Finally, there is the feminist perspective. The story in this novel deals in copious amounts with feminism and gender. Gender in equality is rampant from the start almost through to the very end, with forced marriages, rape and misogyny.